


More Ravished Myself

by minglingcrab



Series: She Wants to Get Down (Coyote Ugly AU) [1]
Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Bars and Pubs, Community: reel_idol, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-14
Updated: 2010-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-06 06:39:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minglingcrab/pseuds/minglingcrab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Coyote Ugly</i> AU for <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/reel_idol/">reel_idol</a>.  You know that scene where Piper Perabo gets fired and has to come up with $250 in one night, so her prospective boyfriend strips on the bar and she auctions him off?  This is like that.  Minus the $250, the boyfriend stripping, and the auctioning off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Ravished Myself

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from a quote from Byron, regarding a girl he was accused of stealing away from a convent: "I should like to know who has been carried off — except poor dear me — I have been more ravished myself than anybody since the Trojan War."

The air in the bar shivers like a fever chill; pulses like the panting, erratic beat in a wrist that’s sticky with sweat.  Adam leans against the wall and watches, just for a minute.  Rachel and Zoe are grinding closely at the far end of the bar top, feeding each other drinks since there’s already a shot in every hand in the swarm at their feet; Cammie is carelessly straddling the middle of the bar, swinging beers over his head towards the pack of frat boys that always seems to wind up fuzzily surrounding him at some point.  There’s a lull, or maybe the night hasn’t really even gotten started yet; the crowd is in patches rather than a solid throng, and the baseline trembles and thrums in the empty spaces as Rachel slides on her back down the bare skin of Zoe’s leg.

Then she grinds her heel down on the fingers that snake towards her calf.  Zoe throws her head back and laughs, mouthing along with the music – _but baby, you’re the right kind of wrong_.  Adam follows the line of the arm attached to the fingers; it’s a face he recognizes, a regular – baggy jeans, a bad haircut, taller than the friend he’s with, and moronic enough to be pleased with himself.  Zoe refills his drink and pushes him away from the bar.  His friend slaps him on the back and downs a Jack and Coke.

Adam smiles.

“Sorry,” Kris says, coming in from the door to Adam’s left and hanging back uncertainly when he sees Adam.  He’s late, which is strange, but technically he’s already fired, so Adam doesn’t bother to say anything.  He moves a step to the right so that Kris can get by.   

(Of course Kris had needed to have his firing _explained_ to him.  “Wait, wait, hold up, hold up.”  He’d shaken his head and made a ridiculously confused face, trying to get it straight.  “You’re firing me because I’m too _friendly_?”

And a completely crap dancer.  “Accessible,” Adam corrected.  “And cute.  I thought it might work, but I was wrong.  Sorry about that.”)

Kris slings his guitar case off his shoulder and props it behind the bar.  He’s probably late coming off some other job, and he’s clearly no longer trying to do _this_ job right because he hasn’t let Cammie dress him up at all.  Better this way, Adam thinks, as Kris gives him a mildly self-conscious smile.

(Kris had looked resigned, watching Adam swing crates of anonymously labeled vodka down onto the dolly – jaw a little tight, though. “D’you want me to stay on ‘til you find a replacement?”

An unexpectedly convenient offer, but Kris must need the time to find a new job, too.  “Yeah, actually," Adam said, "that would be great.”)

Cammie air-kisses lingeringly – like the air is, in fact, kissing him back – and springs off the bar.  Cammie’s been trying to make it as a model going on four years now, and Adam has no idea why he hasn’t gotten a break yet; he’s fair and flawless and larger than life.  His citizenship is supposed to finally come through in two weeks, and as he hands Adam a sweaty wad of bills, Adam makes a mental note to start working on a party.

“Kinda slow,” Kris observes over the music.

“Ach,” Cammie says dismissively.  Adam had never had any thoughts on the hotness of faintly Slavic accents one way or another before he met Cammie, but the guy definitely makes it work.  He lowers his water bottle and wipes his mouth.  “It fills up soon enough.”

Adam can’t say whether he agrees or not.  They might just be having a sluggish night – but it doesn’t feel that way.  There’s an energy in the room, even if the laughter seems lazy; the air is tight with waiting, holding its breath.

Cammie swings himself back up onto the bar one-handed, and the crowd is extremely drunk and happy to see him; Kris watches through narrowed eyes, playing with the hem of his hoodie.

“Any time now, Kris,” Adam says. 

Kris’s return grin is quick and adorable.  He had so needed to be fired.

Kris stays on the ground behind the bar to take orders, rather than climbing up beside Cammie and the others.   (“You’re a good bartender,” Adam said.  “I’ll give you a great reference so you can go tend bar somewhere else.”)  He performs complicated-looking maneuvers with a bottle in each hand for the two giggling brunettes who ask him to, and chats amicably with a biggish, athletic-looking guy beside whom he is kind of hilariously tiny; Adam lets it go, since a) Kris isn’t even a regular employee, and b) trying to get Kris to contain his inner flirt has already proven itself an exercise in futility.  Kris raises a glass in salute when Rachel and Cammie start in on the flaming shots, and then takes advantage of the lull sit down on his stool, back to the wall, head jamming to the music but in some syncopated beat of his own: _crazy little woman in a one man show._

Adam really needs to talk to Rachel about updating these song mixes.

-

Adam is sitting in the alcove between the bar and his office, sorting out invoices and watching Zoe dance.  He really doesn’t need to keep an eye on everything, all the time; technically, he knows that.  But God, she’s fabulous.  Great smile, great legs, and fuck, he’s going to have to replace her, too, before the year is over.  Law school.  Fuckity fuck.  Invoices, invoices.  Why the hell did he buy two crates of orange juice in February, again?

Maybe it would have been better for Kris if Zoe had taken him in hand, rather than Cammie.  Zoe works harder than anyone Adam has ever known, but her smile is always easy, always inviting; she loves the job more than any of them, probably, the way she always seems to let herself _be_ there so fully, in the moment, not to mention glad to draw Adam’s customers into the moment after her.  She’s tossing her hair in rhythm with her hips, saying something over her shoulder to Kris, who answers without looking up, his hands busy with lemon and salt – which she shares out, strutting across the bar and laughing as she presses glasses into people’s hands.

The music shorts out like a shotgun going off.

Someone drops a glass and several people scream and someone else curses, repeatedly, and an acrid stench like burning rubber curls faintly into the back of Adam’s throat.  _Shit._  Kris and Rachel are crowded around the console, Rachel arguing, Kris shaking his head.  Zoe is doing a very good job of convincing everyone that this is hilarious; Cammie announces, “I think since we are without music, we now make this a moment of silence for to honor Mr. Jack Daniels, whom we all most appreciate,” and then they _do_, solemnly raising replenished drinks all around that slosh over as they’re poured, but no one’s complaining.

“I have no idea what happened,” Kris says when Adam steps up to take a look.  “You’re gonna have to call a technician.”

“Right, and I’m sure they’ll send someone right over.”  Rachel rolls her eyes.  “Let me just run home and get my tools and I swear, I can–”

“Run home and get your _stereo_,” Kris says. 

“Would you?” Adam asks her absently, eyeing Kris measuringly, and after a long minute she throws up her hands and goes to grab her coat.

It isn’t exactly _hushed_, but everyone’s definitely keeping an eye on Adam and Kris and the busted music system.  Train-wreck fascination isn’t quite the mood Adam is interested in promoting in his establishment, though.  “Do you think you can handle the music until she gets back?” he asks Kris.

Kris wrinkles his brow at his guitar.  His acoustic guitar.  His expression is doubtful.  “It isn’t gonna to be very –”

“I know.  It’s a temporary solution only.”  Adam shrugs, philosophical.  “Better than nothing.”

Kris tosses him a look too quick for him to decipher and then he’s unbuckling the case – hesitating, with another quick glance at Adam, and then unzipping his hoodie and shrugging out of it.  He climbs on top of the bar, and Adam hides his smile; it’s a real _climb_, for him.  “Hey, guys,” he says, with a little wave.

Adam tries not to wince visibly.  He trusts Kris with the crowd to the extent that he knows he can handle an overload of orders, or intervene before vomiting or otherwise distressing events occur, but anything beyond that…hasn’t turned out well, so far.  In a variety of ways, not all of which pertain to Kris’s chicken-arms dance, or are even his fault, per se.

(“I had to break up a duel over you last night,” Adam said, “and I just can’t afford those kinds of damages to this place.”

Kris stared at him blankly.  “A duel?”

“There are drunk people here,” Adam said.)

Rachel should be back within half an hour, though, and Kris is comfortable with the guitar in his hands, fiddling with the tuning pegs.  “So,” he says, strumming a few random chords.  “What do you think, should we pick up where the last song left off?”  The chords resolve themselves into something coherent and a little funky; Adam tries to keep an open mind.  Whatever song it is, Kris is playing it like it’s bigger than just his one guitar – playing it a little too hard; which is maybe the only available way to go about things, considering, but desperation isn’t really all that attractive.

It’s the song that was playing when the music cut off, so it’s probably the first one that came to mind:  “They’re pickin’ up the prisoners, and putting ‘em in a pen–”

Kris has a nice voice, but this is not a place people come to listen to nice voices.  Adam catches Zoe’s eye, and she smirks, gets up smoothly; goes to Cammie, lines up her ass with his crotch, and starts dancing.  Adam bites back a smile, shaking his head.

Everyone is easing up a little, though, which is the whole reason Kris is up there – they’re getting into the music, Kris included.  He’s barely over-singing, now, maybe just a little tension that he releases into the growl he puts into it here and there: “She can’t feel the heat, coming off the street, no – she wants to party, she wants to get _down – _”

That’s debatable.  Adam checks his watch.

(“Rachel says that _you_ used to take the bar, sometimes,” Kris said.

A mortgage, a liquor license, and friends promising to bring their friends; jumping on top of the bar that first time, the music and the laughter; dancing, a drink in his hand, breathing in the sweet smoke and the sweat, and everyone following after him down below like they couldn’t fucking _do _anything else but feel good.

“I’m running a business here,” Adam said.)

It’s not like Kris is terrible or anything.  It’s just – there’s Cammie, who makes people want to drink with him, and Zoe, who makes them want to dance with her, and Rachel, who makes them want to be stupid; and then there’s Kris, who probably just needs the tips and who is frankly edible in his little white undershirt.

People are drinking and dancing a little again when he ends the song, though, so Adam can’t really fault him at all.  He looks over at Adam when he finishes; Adam nods, and Kris smiles wryly back at him, shrugging.  And _then_ – and then the best possible thing happens; a guy detaches himself from his friends and comes up to the bar, a little squinty and awkward behind square-framed glasses, to ask for a glass of water.  Cammie’s smile is slow, and Kris has just enough warning time to crouch down and shove his guitar into its case.

“Hey, Adam,” Cammie calls, “do we serve water in this bar?”

“What now?”  Adam raises his eyebrows.  He is flummoxed.  He is bewildered by the question. 

“Do we serve _water _in this bar?” Cammie demands, half-turning and letting his voice wash over the noise, wash it out.  “Do we?”

The regulars, of course, are already with him.  “Hell no, H2O!”

“What now?” Cammie says, and the guy who asked for the water is utterly lost, and finds no answers in Kris’s shit-eating grin or Zoe’s sympathetic one.  The chanting is in full force by the time Cammie has the spigot in his hand and has begun to spray everything in a ten foot radius.

“Hell no, H20!  Hell no, H20!”

There’s nothing like a crowd full of wet t-shirts to restore the right kind of balance when things go wrong.  Maybe Adam can finish with those invoices now.

Except that – startlingly – there’s Kris back on top of the bar again, peeling his sodden undershirt over his head and leaving behind warm golden chest and shoulders and hips that disappear into jeans that ride low. 

“How about another song?” Kris says, angling the guitar against his damp skin and tilting his chin to direct the question at all of them, but mainly at Adam, with a slow, tiny grin.

Adam stays where he is.

-

It’s “Come Together” this time; Kris loves the Beatles.  He’s mentioned that before.

Adam is fairly certain that Kris isn’t trying to prove anything with this, other than that it’s possible to make slow, relentless love to a three-minute song.

Kris’s hips thrust up against the guitar in rhythm as he plays.  “Grooving up slowly,” he croons, catching them in it, in his slow groove, in the pulse of his hips, in the trace of his smirk on, “He just do what he _please_.”

His feet shift with the music, kicking; his shoulders jam with it; he reaches the bridge and his voice drops deep and sweet over the nonsense words about feet and knees.  His hips keep moving all the time, steady to the beat.

He kicks off his flip-flops, first one and then the other; his toes dance in and out of the puddles on top of the bar as he sings.

“Come together,” and his hands are strong and deft on the strings of his guitar; “Come together,” and a fat bead of moisture trickles with infinite slowness over one nipple – trails down the flat of his stomach – “Right now–” and the note stretches and bends and trails down, too, dipping, as the water drops behind the waist of his jeans and disappears; “Over me,” and as he lifts his head, his eyes collide with Adam’s.

Rachel comes in with a stereo in her arms.

-

Kris stops by Adam’s office to say goodbye before he leaves.  His hair has dried in a fluffy mass, and he’s wearing glasses and is weighted down with his guitar and messenger bag.  “I’m heading out,” he says, hands shoved in his pockets.

Adam has never seen Kris wear glasses before.  These have thin, pretty square frames.  “Thanks for tonight,” he says.

Kris shrugs.

When Cammie would dress Kris up for work, Kris would come in wearing a vest without a shirt, and then dance on top of the bar and serve drinks.  It sounds ridiculous even without the remembered visual Adam has to go with it.

“Maybe—” he starts.  And stops.

“Nah.”  Kris smiles, and then it turns into a laugh that crinkles his nose and eyes.  “Tonight was wild.”

Adam huffs, and it turns into a laugh, too.  His head falls into his hands, shaking back and forth.  “Oh, God.”

“I know, right?”  Kris chuckles.  “Anyway, so—”  He kicks at the ground.  “So, you have my number.”

Adam looks up. 

Kris smiles out of the corner of his mouth.  “Right?  You didn’t throw it out just because you fired me?”

His glasses are really, stupidly cute.

“I’m taking you somewhere with dancing,” Adam says.

Kris looks dubious at that, but he tosses a sweet smile over his shoulder as he leaves.


End file.
